The rocks under the bridge resolve themselves into five furry faces,
Twitching noses under masked eyes.
A guy on a bike stops to warn me, “those things are mean.”
I assure him I won’t try to touch one, and he rides off.
The mamma raccoon waits patiently for her kits to get a noseful of human, then scuttles off into the bushes, followed by one, two, and three.
A good ten seconds later, the runt, half the size of its siblings,
looks up from where it was slubbing in the mud.
“They went that way,” I point.
After a second’s thought, it scuttles after them.
I am relieved to see one of the quicker siblings greet it at the edge of the thicket,
Licking its face and chivviyng it off into the darkness.